He then focused on the PBA. He ran the 1958 Empire State Open, a non-PBA event, which caught the attention of founders of the fledgling organization. The PBA awarded its first ever tournament, bowled over Memorial Day weekend in 1959, to Schades Academy in Albany and appointed Cramer as the director.

On the lanes, Cramer won the Newsday Eastern Open in 1956 and 1957, and he was a finalist in the BPAA championships (now called the U.S. Open) in Minneapolis in 1958.

Cramer was named to Bowling Magazine's all-East team in 1958, after receiving honorable mention in 1956 and 1957. In 1958, he teamed with the late Joey Schmidt of Colonie for third place in doubles at the American Bowling Congress championships. He rolled a 2,030 all-events score that year, also good for third place.

In 1950, he bowled a 40-game "home-and-home" match against Dick Hoover of Akron, Ohio. The first 20 games were bowled at the Cohoes Bowling Arena, where Cramer built a 426-pin lead. The competitors then went to Akron, where Hoover — considered one of the country's great bowlers in the pre-PBA era — averaged 256 for 20 games to beat Cramer.

Cramer earned high-average honors seven times in the Capital City Classic League, the Albany area's premier league, in the 1950s and 1960s.

Cramer, who began bowling at age 15, had three career 300s during an era when perfect games were rare.